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The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales

4 years ago Jul 23,2020, 14:14:40 PM

Humankind Feature Focus 07: Civics and Ideologies

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Hey everybody,



We have already talked about how you can shape your civilization by picking different cultures before, so today we want to tell you about another way you shape your civilization and their history in Humankind: Civics and Ideologies! Check out the video below or read the blog for more information.




Civics represent many different aspects of your civilization. They are a legal and structural reflection of the moral choices, values, and beliefs of your society. How is your government structured? Who owns the land? What are the religious rites of your society like?



These Civics are unlocked by specific gameplay situations, so that the choices you can take always relate to the achievements and experience of your people in some way. However, to enact any Civics, you will also need Civics Points, which are gained slowly over time if your empire is stable. For each Civic, you can enact one of two options that provide immediate gameplay benefits, but also shift your ideologies. Once enacted, Civics are difficult to change except in specific circumstances or events. For example, if the culture of your neighbors influences your people, they may ask you to adopt change your Civics to more closely match your neighbors.



Ideologies represent the values and shape of your civilization in a different way, a result of many individual decisions taken over the course of the game.

Each time you select a Civics option or make a decision on a narrative event, you move your society along one of the four ideological axes. These axes are Economy, Geopolitics, Government, and Society. Each axis is divided into five different steps that provide different gameplay bonuses, with a balanced bonus at the center and more specialist bonuses at the extremes of the axes. In addition to these bonuses, Ideologies will affect diplomacy, and how easy or difficult it is for you to wage a protracted war against a neighbor. It is harder to keep your people motivated to fight a neighbor they share values with.


In addition to Civics, your Ideologies are influenced by Narrative Events.

These events are inspired by historical events, and are triggered by specific gameplay situations. Thanks to these specific conditions, you may discover new events even after playing many games of Humankind, and experience new combinations of events each game. On top of their immediate gameplay benefits, costs, or consequences, many of these events can lead to further events later in the game. Furthermore, you will always have to weigh the immediate results against the long-term shift of the Ideologies of your civilization.



Since Ideologies are shaped by your Civics and choices during events, they will dynamically shift over time. This system allows you to shape your civilization, and experience the history and journey of your people.



Hope you enjoyed this brief look at the Civics and Ideologies systems in Humankind!

Let us know what you think below.

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4 years ago
Aug 4, 2020, 10:25:16 PM

This looks awesome, can't wait to play it... waiting for the e-mail to come through!

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4 years ago
Aug 2, 2020, 6:55:18 PM

Really interested in this from the socio-political theory point of view. As per the majority of theorists, ideologies are those socially constructed sets of beliefs and value which include an analysis of the world as it is, a view of of it ought to be and how to get there, as well as a moral lens through which the world is perceived. Humankind's implementation perfectly captures several aspects of this definition.

However, it would be interesting to get some response as to how your ideologies will shape your perceptions of events, other cultures, peoples, and other civilisations in general, or even the UI in battle for example. One great way of illustrating how this aspect could be integrated is very simple: the more focused on the self (Homeland side of geo-political axis) the player is, the more references towards other civlisations are 'distant' or even hostile; when greeting another civilisation, your greeting is in contempt and your dialogue is negative about meeting 'weak', 'heretical', or 'different' leaders.


Hope this helps!

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4 years ago
Jul 28, 2020, 10:48:14 AM

Ever since I first played Endless Legends I knew you guys were on to something. With this game I think you'll claim your rightful place in the 4x legacy.

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4 years ago
Jul 28, 2020, 12:23:37 AM

I told myself I'd never pre-order a game again, and have stuck to that for 5 years. I feel my streak is going to be broken as soon as this is up on Steam or GOG.

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4 years ago
Jul 27, 2020, 3:55:26 PM

On the one hand I am tempted to read every bit of information on this game as it is given to us, on the other I want to go in semi-blind and determine how naturally the game will settle in my brain.

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4 years ago
Jul 27, 2020, 4:13:18 AM

I'm really looking forward to this.  I really enjoy Endless Legend and always appreciate the 'making of' details that help build a game.  Potentially getting a chance to help provide some feedback is a great opportunity.

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4 years ago
Jul 25, 2020, 9:19:41 AM

 EndlessFun wrote:

If you hover your mouse over the bar for the ideology, it will give you that information as a tooltip.


Thanks. Maybe i did get it wrong. Just for the avoidance of doubt ,i added two Screenshots from the first impressions on what i think the menu does. IF that is still the menu ,then i see three small things that could be improved :


1. The ideology bonus shows where you will be , rather than the comparison of where you came from .


2. Only one of the options effects are shown . You need to hover separately.


3. The tooltip overlays the actual ideology effect 


To be clear ,that menu as is is fit for purpose.i won't make a mountain out of a molehill. But more of the information could be presented at once without needing to hover around. Assuming that is the right menu and I didn't miss something .

Updated 4 years ago.
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4 years ago
Jul 25, 2020, 2:28:52 AM

wow

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4 years ago
Jul 23, 2020, 2:16:13 PM

Cool!

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4 years ago
Jul 24, 2020, 10:41:57 PM

Thanks Cat and EndlessFun for getting back to me.



The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
Shadowhal wrote:

1. I suppose differences on ideological axes will influence how well other empires like you and so how likely they are to trade or go to war? It's been alluded to, but I'm sure it was stated explicitly. It would be a pretty neat way to make conflicts and alliances natural.

We'll talk more about this when we talk about diplomacy.

Later (TM) is fine. I look forward to seeing what further you have in stock there. This and religions certainly likes a nice foundation for creating natural alliances and wars. I also liked the war the diplomacy system evolved from EL to ES, particularly the influence pressure. Some of that seems to come into HK as well.


2. So you need both enough stability to have a civic point AND some trigger event to put a civic into action, right? 

Civics points generate over time, but they do so faster at very high stability. On the other hand, at very low stability you won't generate points and instead have to worry about revolution. However, the trigger event only unlocks the Civics. You do not have to make a choice immediately and can come back to it later... or never, if you think both choices are not appropriate for your civilization.


Shadowhal [apologies for messed up formatting]: thanks for explaining and confirming. Nice link.

Could you talk a bit more about revolutions? Is it more the type of "city goes unproductive and/or a few 'rebel' units are spawned" or are there more elaborate mechanisms, e.g. option for a city/cities to declare independence and form minor peoples or join a different player?

3. I hope there is some variability in when which civic choices will be unlocked. It would see a missed opportunity in gameplay variety, if it were always "1st choice is about army, 2nd choice is about government type, 3rd choice is about land ownership".

As said in the blog, they are unlocked by events with specific trigger conditions. There are a few that are ordered because they build on each other, but most of them are fully independent in how you unlock them and it depends on the conditions in game.


That's what it sounded like, but thanks for confirming. Sounds great.


4. I wonder how religion ties into this. Is it part of civis and ideologies or a separate system? I could see the value of integrating it fairly tightly, as there is potential for a lot of overlap and duplicate gameplay, but then again we haven't see much about it yet.

Religion is not part of Civics and Ideologies, but there are Civics that affect religion in your civilization.


Thanks for confirming. I'll likewise be curious what you have in store. It would be great if the systems worked sufficiently differently from one another for each to add something else. For instance, I felt that religions and civics were somewhat similar in Civ V: both required some additional resource and in return you could pick from a few benefits to suit your situation. They differences were enough to make it still work, but there was some overlap.


5. I would find it clearer if the interface showed what ideology-driven effects a given civic choice will have. If I get this right, a civic has both its direct gameplay effect and whatever effect kicks in from movements on the ideological axis. Display both e.g. the former on top and the before/after on the axis at the bottom. That would be helpful for decision making, I think.

As EndlessFun said, you can see the shift on the axes above the different options, and the positions on those axes have tooltips that will tell you the effects of those positions.


I recall some screenshots and think I know what you mean. In that case it's not quite what I meant. I was thinking more:

"Picking this option will move you one bucket further towards liberty. This will mean +10% science in all cities, compared to +5% science in all cities and +15% science capital at the moment."

Think of it like Diablo where you compare your shiny new weapon with you have currently equipped rather than hovering back and forth.


6. Is there anything the player can do actively to shift position on ideology axes? Is it purely reactionary to events and the occasional civic choices. Not necessarily something I want, but just curious. After all, ideology and an empires culture doesn't change quickly ... but it does change.

The ideologies shift only in response to the events and civics, but I don't think of the Civics as "reactionary," because once they are unlocked I choose which ones to enact at any time I want and have a Civics Point to spare.

That's fine. I was a bit torn as to what would make more sense.

By "active" I meant what options I have, if I suddenly decide I want to move to (or away from) a given point on an axis, e.g. to improve relationships. My options here are to a) get stability up, so acquisition of a civic point is accelerated and make sure I hit a trigger event; or b) wait for (or trigger?) an event and make an according choice. That's somewhat more passive/reactive than changing empire laws in ES2 or civics in Civ VI. But again, not necessarily a bad thing, because it means you need to have the big and longt-term picture in mind when making those choices to begin with. Cultures don't usually go from autocratic to liberal overnight (or the other way).



A different question also come to mind: do civics or ideologies influence the look of a player's avatar, e.g. like the ideologies in Civ: BE? Of course entirely cosmetic, but would be a nice touch.


For that matter, what are the different players referred to during the game? Always the name of the last culture picked? With 10 players, does it get hard to keep track who is? "Wait, you Franks ... were you previously those Romans I got along with well or those b*stard Greeks?"


Finally, more on the topic of ideologies again: do any cultures or culture archetypes and the AIs playing them, have preferences for them? Like militaritistic cultures getting bonuses for autocracy directions? Again, not sure they should. The cutlure attributes are already enought to set the player on her path, without nudging even more hard interactions. But just curious.

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4 years ago
Jul 24, 2020, 1:38:44 PM

This is going to be fun! Love the aspect of events/decisions and it's consequences/results, it just enriches the game experience. Definitely will make it very entertaining.

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4 years ago
Jul 24, 2020, 1:35:08 PM
Shadowhal wrote:

1. I suppose differences on ideological axes will influence how well other empires like you and so how likely they are to trade or go to war? It's been alluded to, but I'm sure it was stated explicitly. It would be a pretty neat way to make conflicts and alliances natural.

We'll talk more about this when we talk about diplomacy.


2. So you need both enough stability to have a civic point AND some trigger event to put a civic into action, right? 

Civics points generate over time, but they do so faster at very high stability. On the other hand, at very low stability you won't generate points and instead havae to worry about revolution. However, the trigger event only unlocks the Civics. You do not have to make a choice immediately and can come back to it later... or never, if you think both choices are not appropriate for your civilization.


3. I hope there is some variability in when which civic choices will be unlocked. It would see a missed opportunity in gameplay variety, if it were always "1st choice is about army, 2nd choice is about government type, 3rd choice is about land ownership". 

As said in the blog, they are unlocked by events with specific trigger conditions. There are a few that are ordered because they build on each other, but most of them are fully independent in how you unlock them and it depends on the conditions in game.


4. I wonder how religion ties into this. Is it part of civis and ideologies or a separate system? I could see the value of integrating it fairly tightly, as there is potential for a lot of overlap and duplicate gameplay, but then again we haven't see much about it yet.

Religion is not part of Civics and Ideologies, but there are Civics that affect religion in your civilization.


5. I would find it clearer if the interface showed what ideology-driven effects a given civic choice will have. If I get this right, a civic has both its direct gameplay effect and whatever effect kicks in from movements on the ideological axis. Display both e.g. the former on top and the before/after on the axis at the bottom. That would be helpful for decision making, I think.

As EndlessFun said, you can see the shift on the axes above the different options, and the positions on those axes have tooltips that will tell you the effects of those positions.


6. Is there anything the player can do actively to shift position on ideology axes? Is it purely reactionary to events and the occasional civic choices. Not necessarily something I want, but just curious. After all, ideology and an empires culture doesn't change quickly ... but it does change.

The ideologies shift only in response to the events and civics, but I don't think of the Civics as "reactionary," because once they are unlocked I choose which ones to enact at any time I want and have a Civics Point to spare.

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4 years ago
Jul 23, 2020, 6:28:58 PM
1. We don't know all that much about how it will affect diplomacy. We've heard that attacking someone with the same ideologies as you can make your people unhappy, but we don't know the full extent of the system, or that much about diplomacy in general.
2. It's not quite about having enough stability, you slowly build up civic points, and the stability just speeds that up or slows it down if it's very high or low.
3. Civics being unlocked is dependant on the trigger events, most don't have other civics as prerequisites, though it looks like a few are a part of a tree.
4.  Short answer, it doesn't look like religion is a part of civics and ideologies, though they are at least somewhat related. Long answer: we don't know all that much about what religion does, but we do know that you gain one once you grow enough pop, it has it's own resource (faith) and that it has it's own screen along with tech and society. There is a religion section for civics, but that seems different from the religion itself, and I would guess that those civics would have more to do with how your society treats things like religious diversity, proselytizing, the role of religion in government, etc. than your own religion and it's effects.
5. When it's showing your choices of civics it also shows how the ideologies will look after each choice, so that's already in.
6. Producing influence let's you culturally convert other people's land. This doesn't give you the land, but let's you exert soft power on them. We don't really know what can be done with this system, but shifting other people's ideologies or civics I believe has been confirmed. Other than that, We don't know what opportunities, if any, there are to change civics.
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4 years ago
Jul 23, 2020, 6:03:12 PM

Cool mechanics! Could you tell us a few more examples of mechanics? :-) 

About the lack of motivation for the war of neighbors with the same values is clear. Is there a positive connection between the same ideologies in several players? For example: if three players (who know each other) choose the same path, then their development in this direction is accelerated or brings more advantages.

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4 years ago
Jul 23, 2020, 5:58:45 PM

I have been looking forward to this feature focus and I like what I see. Seems like a nice evolution of how events and political parties interacted in ES2. I had a few questions and a comment:


1. I suppose differences on ideological axes will influence how well other empires like you and so how likely they are to trade or go to war? It's been alluded to, but I'm sure it was stated explicitly. It would be a pretty neat way to make conflicts and alliances natural.

2. So you need both enough stability to have a civic point AND some trigger event to put a civic into action, right? 

3. I hope there is some variability in when which civic choices will be unlocked. It would see a missed opportunity in gameplay variety, if it were always "1st choice is about army, 2nd choice is about government type, 3rd choice is about land ownership". 

4. I wonder how religion ties into this. Is it part of civis and ideologies or a separate system? I could see the value of integrating it fairly tightly, as there is potential for a lot of overlap and duplicate gameplay, but then again we haven't see much about it yet.

5. I would find it clearer if the interface showed what ideology-driven effects a given civic choice will have. If I get this right, a civic has both its direct gameplay effect and whatever effect kicks in from movements on the ideological axis. Display both e.g. the former on top and the before/after on the axis at the bottom. That would be helpful for decision making, I think.

6. Is there anything the player can do actively to shift position on ideology axes? Is it purely reactionary to events and the occasional civic choices. Not necessarily something I want, but just curious. After all, ideology and an empires culture doesn't change quickly ... but it does change.

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4 years ago
Jul 23, 2020, 3:21:26 PM

Looks really interesting, I like the way they seem to shape your little civilization, hopefully it will also have quite an impact on the gameplay instead of being mostly flavour.

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